What astonished, or took you quite by surprise, today?

What amazed me today?

Waiting at "arrivals" in Heathrow Airport, watching all the people coming through from Jamaica, wearing flimsy T Shirts, shorts and sandals, and then complaining that they were cold.

I bet most of them did the same thing last year, and the year before.

Yeah, I've done that returning from Puerto Vallarta Mexico to Denver Colorado in mid Janurary.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

I'm feeling so good today, I'll let you keep it!

Eva--

No goddess could have deserved a better ending.

Eva. Big smile. I'm glad it's back. What a relief. Will you ever wear it again? Or will you put it someplace safe? (I hope you wear it and enjoy it.)

I wore it for the rest of the day, then verrrrrrry carefully put it in the place of honor in my jewelry box. I went back and checked the box three times last night to make sure it was really there.

I want to wear it...eventually. But after all it's been through, for now I just need to know it's somewhere very safe.

When I ran my drycleaning store I found a diamond ring in the pocket of an overcoat. The customer was overjoyed.

The ring had been insured for a largish sum and the customer had made a claim. The insurance company had refused to pay out on the grounds she couldnt tell them where she lost the ring.

As she said, If i knew where i lost it, it wouldnt be lost.

<umbrellas cannot be owned>




So, I've been a busy girl the last four or five hours. I had settled in to a bit of a2king and news-looking when I heard a small noise, quite close to me.
To the left.
My first thought was mouse on the desk - I had mice a couple of times back in north north, but not at this time of year.
I moved stuff around.
Felt a paper slightly wet.
A drop hit my head.

Ka Boom! My roof is leaking.
But my house has a new roof.
I feel around a bit more and my surge protector is getting wet and there are drops on my modem...
I lurch around pulling plugs.

I drag the computer stuff from the room to the living room.
But now I can't find my contractor's number.
I call Dys and Diane, no answer.
I try to call BBB but her number is in the computer and unlisted.
I try to remember where I put contractor's business card. Cannot find it with my little packet of ABQ business cards, which makes sense since I set it aside.
I call Dys and Di several more times. Pfffft.
I don't want to go up on the roof myself. Not that I wanted them to either, but they have the contractor's phone number.
I start emptying out the room, as I know roofs can collapse.
Grumble -- this is the room I've stacked the boxes of books in.

I put both desks into the living room --

I clean off both desks putting stuff where I can find room. At the very end of cleaning the computer table I find the contractor's number and call him on his cell, his page, and his home. (Maybe he'll go up on the roof and see if anything is plugged up).
The desk made of a door of the house interior over some saw horses will be good for the boxes. Heavy awkward door, oof getting it through the hallways..
The light hollow core door that rests over bookshelves will be good for the computer, I find another place in the living room, luckily rather empty to start with, just my painting stuff...

I carry twenty four boxes weighing some biggish amount of pounds each to the living room newly sited table..

The dripping timing gets a lot faster re drips per minute.

The phone rings, it's the contractor. He tells me to make a bigger hole to let the water drain. That makes sense. He reminds me - I knew this - that the roof is very new and should be under warrantee.
He says be careful who you let up there, people could tear the seal on the roofing. (The roofing job had been raved about to me both by the seller's agent and neighbors as the best possible blah blah..)

I finish with the boxes. I stare at the second table I've now decked out in the living room and realize I don't have a phone jack in there.

I sigh and go ahead with making the leak-hole bigger now that that room is empty...

I set up my old dining room table in another room with a phone jack,
set up the computer anew, and here I am.

Man, I'll be sore tomorrow.
But the contractor guy is coming over to see if he can tell if there are any places plugged up.
And tomorrow I'll get in gear and find that roofer, probably via my real estate agent so that I get some formality in the mix.

Starting to think I might like a bowl of soup.

ahh telephone sex. Always a good standby.

Osso, impressed with the quick thinking--unplugging. Sorry you had to do all that schlepping of heavy stuff. Ugh.

I watch a lot of home repair shows. Why? Dunno. I like 'em. I don't think a new roof should be leaking. But what do I know. I live in an apartment.

Hope everything is dry, fixed, and back where it belongs soon.

Eva, I'm delighted for you!

What a moment that must have been!

It's raining!

It's raining!

It's raining!





I can't believe it!

And real rain, too, coming down steadily! Not just a bit of token spitting!

WOO HOO!

Great news, msolga. What a relief for Oz's flora and fauna.

Yes!

And a huge relief to my stressed garden, Roberta!

And it's not even my rostered watering day! A bonus!

Well...I certainly hadn't planned to jab a fish hook (barbed!) into my thumb..luckily I only need two fingers to type...

Yay for the Aussie rain!, is it putting any pressure on the bush fires?

I had an emergency envelop to get to India within the week. The thing arrived here this morning and has to be in Hyderabad by this saturday. I drug my lil nephew to the fedex shipping center (thanks to the in-store construction going on, my nephew was easy to handle) where I was informed that fedex's computer system was down - WORLDWIDE. It will be back up by 7 p.m. Greeeeaaaaat. I called at 5-ish, it was back, I got the letter off <phew>.

The rain meant that the fires eased off considerably, k, but it's a temporary reprieve. A couple more high fire risk months to get through yet!

I'm astonished I managed to get margo to the airport on time yesterday, for her flight home to Sydney. It was definitely looking a bit dicey for a while there! Phew!

While W & I were doing our regular early morning walk around the Maribyrnong river this morning, floating in the water (on the other side of the river) was what looked alarmingly like a human body.
Gulp.
On crossing the bridge & walking back on the other side of the river, we discovered that it was in fact, a life-sized inflatable human "body" of some sort. So what sort of sick person would have put that there?

Scared the living daylights out of me!

(This episode was made even more alarming for me because last night I watched Robert Altman's Short Cuts a second time.)

I've only been back in southeast QLD for two and a half years, but this wet season has been wetter than the last for sure.

What surprised me this morning, was dropping a sixpack of eggs on my foot, and not breaking one of them.